Positive Youth Development

Youth Development

Each year, you go shopping for the ingredients you need for your famous holiday dish, but do you know the ingredients for successful adolescent development? Chances are, you cannot find these ingredients in your kitchen or at a local grocery store. The article "What Do Adolescents Need for Healthy Development? Implications for Youth Policy" by Jodie Roth and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn explores these ingredients and what factors contribute the most to the transitions of adolescence. Through this article, you will be able to identify the importance of the five C’s, the environments adolescents spend their time, and exemplify how this article could be useful for future studies relevant to adolescence. 

Roth and Brooks-Gunn begin their article by stating the emphasis our nation has placed on positive and negative youth development and the importance of a healthy transition from adolescence to adulthood. They reference other scholars in their field and explain positive attributes that constitute successful development such as the "five C's" and internal and external assets that are said to be world-wide models of positive development. Roth and Brooks-Gun state the challenges of risks and opportunity the adolescents will face and significant differences that come along with it. Also discussed are the difficulties of going through these transitions depending on the adolescents’ relationships with others, experience in handling difficult situations, and academic strain throughout transitioning years.

To conclude their article, the authors focus on the settings in which adolescents live, work, go to school, socialize and the individuals with whom the adolescent surrounds his or herself. They breakdown separate beneficial aspects and influences of social groups and the environments adolescents spend most of their time in. Roth and Brooks-Gunn significantly stress the importance of where the adolescents are raised and helpful youth development programs present in schools and communities. Roth and Brooks-Gunn highlight the most beneficial characteristics within in these settings and explain that home, school, work and relationships have separate requirements necessary to promote successful and healthy youth development. 

The article "What Do Adolescents Need for Healthy Development? Implications for Youth Policy" provides five major ingredients for successful adolescent development: competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring/compassion. These ingredients are also known as the five C’s and are “often the focus of contemporary community-based programing for youth” (Steinburg, 2010 p. 229). According to the article, these youth programs help emphasize skill building, community service, and help youth become healthy and live productive lives. Of the five C’s, I believe that the confidence “ingredient” is the hardest for adolescents to successfully achieve simply because adolescence is full of adjustments and adaptations that do make the adolescent feel uncomfortable. Roth and Brooks-Gunn mention that adolescence is a “time of bodily changes, expanding independence, and growing self-discovery” (Roth, Brooks-Gunn, 2000 p. 4); Therefore, at this stage in adolescence, confidence is hard to build. Already feeling insecure and overwhelmed with all their physical, psychological and cognitive changes, as well as the pressure of universalistic norms, sense of their over-all self-worth may be hard to find. Confidence is something that has to be built and with the disadvantage of not knowing what your body is going through at this time is not helpful. However, with the help of the adolescent’s family, friends, and other environmental settings, confidence will be built in increments and the adolescent’s personal qualities will start to shine.

Roth and Brooks-Gunn also express strongly the impacts of the settings where adolescents spend most of their time. They mention that adolescents spend most of their time at home, school, with their peers, at work, or just hanging out in the neighborhood itself. The article describes several acronyms to briefly identify important ingredients. The authors emphasize how important it is for the adolescent to get Time, Limit Setting, and Connectedness (TLC) at home and have open opportunity for Friendships, Resistance, Interest, Numbers, and Deviance (FRIEND) with their peers. They also emphasize the developmental aspects of Appropriate environment, Behavior, and Connection (ABC) at school, a chance to Widen their future plans, gain Organizational and Responsibility skills, and Knowledge (WORK) at the workplace, and the neighborhood’s influence with Space, Face and Place. 

I found the home setting to be the most important in enhancing an adolescent’s well-being because the majority of what the adolescent will gain and learn comes from home and the way they were raised. The home environment also influences the adolescent’s level of achievement with the help of the three major mechanisms: the parents’ values and expectations, cultural capital, and authoritative parenting (Steinburg, 2010 p. 380-381). Roth and Brooks-Gunn mentioned that for a child to have positive developmental paths, time, limit setting, and caring from the family is the most effective influence. Time spent with adolescents can influence them in great ways and is “necessary to develop a trusting relationship” with each other (Roth, Brooks-Gunn, 2000 p. 6). Time, limit setting and connectedness is all about keeping in touch with your adolescent, monitoring their behaviors and whereabouts and building parent-child relationships. However, those of lower SES levels may not have the time to spend with their adolescent(s) due to single parenting and long hours of employment to provide for the child (Course Content, Week 1).  Thus, this causes the adolescent to have unsupervised time at home during the after-school hours. This unsupervised time away from each other may be positive or negative depending on what the adolescent does with this free time. This is when keeping in touch, “monitoring through telephone calls,” or gaining parental relationships with other parents is important (Roth, Brooks-Gunn, 2000 p. 7). However, to ensure supervision and a healthy, noncriminal environment, youth programs within the community can be very effective to the developmental process. Studies show that youth programs that engage youth with community leaders and other peers “appear to be the most effective,” (Roth, Brooks-Gunn, 2000 p. 7) along with the time, limit setting, and caring/connectedness in the adolescent’s home setting. 

While reading the article, I noticed material that I could relate to other class material or previous lessons. However, the ABC’s of school was a mixture of both. In order to succeed in a school setting, the appropriate environment, behavior, and a strong connection with teachers is needed. This portion of the article was extremely interesting because it emphasized more on Lesson 9. We were introduced to the types of schools, the transition process and school size, but the article stressed more on the behavior of school staff and other students. Roth and Brooks-Gunn accentuate how the behavior of the staff  “shapes the message that they send to youth about appropriate behavior” (Roth, Brooks-Gunn, 2000 p. 11). They also mention that the behavior of other students influences the school’s culture and the behavior of their peers. From large school size to violent behaviors in the halls, every parent should want to make sure their child feels and is safe. This portion of the article is very informative and beneficial to both future students and parents. Students planning to study adolescence should want to know how the school environment affects any child because school is where most adolescent transitions take place. Since the article focuses on the importance of the five C’s and the environments adolescents spend their time, college students can also use this information for not only their personal situations, but for future references and research studies. I think reading this article will greatly inform anyone, especially those who have children or are planning to study adolescence as a career.

Works Consulted/Cited

Roth, J., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2000). What do adolescents need for health development? Implications for youth policy. Social Policy Report, XIV, 3-19.

Steinberg, L. (2010). Adolescence, 9th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 229, 380-381.